“NATO’s build-up in Macedonia is incredible, and goes
virtually unnoticed – except in that country. The Macedonian
Parliament has not even discussed the deployment of more
than 12.000 heavily armed troops and NATO bars journalists
from investigating what is going on. NATO is now stronger
than the country’s own defence. It took the international
community, read OSCE, 5 months to get 1500 civilian monitors
into Kosovo, but it took only a few weeks to get the
military build-up underway in Macedonia. When does some one
investigate how this happened or who pays for this and the
NATO build-up around Yugoslavia? Or ask what Macedonian
Prime Minister Ljupco Geogievski was promised by U.S.
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, when the had
breakfast recently in Washington?” – says Jan Oberg, TFF’s
director and co-founder who has just visited the country.
“Here is another reasonably relevant question: Since
Christopher Hill, the main author of the Kosovo Agreement on
the table in Paris and the diplomat who prepared the ground
for those talks, is also the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia,
did he calculate with this involvement of Macedonia and, if
so, did he prepare Macedonian decision-makers in advance –
or is this build-up something that has just unfolded as the
things progressed? Is there any reasons for circumventing
normal politeness and democratic decision-making by
host-nation?
Why is NATO all over Macedonia, that already troubled and
quite fragile state? For two reasons, namely a) to “extract”
OSCE verifiers from Kosovo who can’t sit there if NATO
decides to bomb Yugoslavia, and b) serve as a base for and
reinforcement of the NATO forces stipulated in the Paris
Kosovo document. Yugoslavia considers the extraction force a
potential aggressor. It was NOT mentioned in the October
1998 agreement between Yugoslav President Milosevic and U.S.
ambassador Richard Holbrooke – or so we assume since that
agreement has not been made public.
The Yugoslav military and political leadership now
perceive Macedonia as hosting forces aimed at aggression on
Yugoslav territory – friends of your enemies being your
enemies too. German forces are strongly represented and
bring heavy equipment, and it is the first time they may get
into regular warfare and not peacekeeping. Not surprisingly,
Yugoslavs conscious of history will be reminded of last time
Germany came to that region (1941).
Should NATO bomb Yugoslavia it can NOT be excluded that
the Yugoslavs will retaliate against NATO troops where they
are nearest, namely in Macedonia, e.g. in Kumanovo where,
they are co-located with UN Blue Helmets. Thus,
paradoxically, countries participating in bombing raids,
such as Norway and Denmark, indirectly jeopardize the safety
of their own UN peacekeepers in the region – unless
they are “extracted” too. Do politicians in these countries
not see the connection?
The new coalition government in Macedonia is anything but
experienced and cohesive. Two of the three coalition
partners are traditional “extremist” parties, the Macedonian
VMRO and the Albanian DPA. The third is a newly formed
party, the Democratic Alternative, DA. This government’s
first foreign policy move was to recognise Taiwan in order
to obtain a 1 billion US $ economic deal – that has not
materialized yet – and thereby antagonize China (see
below).
Macedonia IS a fragile country, economically
constitutionally and in terms of unresolved problems in the
relations between the majority Macedonians and the 25-30 per
cent Albanian citizens. It has serious unresolved problems
in the fields of education and in relation to its name and
relations with its neighbours. The economy is a mixture of a
petty market and pavement/pizza economy, black markets and
far too few productive investments, profits run low, debts
high. Recently when the three coalition partners were to
evaluate the first 100 days, the Albanian DPA was not
present. Be this as it may, it is not the least due to its
prudent, gentleman-like president Kiro Gligorov, to the
small but effective OSCE mission and the highly respected UN
mission – that there has been some stability in Macedonia
compared with other parts of ex-Yugoslavia. Will there in
the future?
Macedonia’s ability to receive refugees is limited. It’s
contingency planning covers 20,000. If things go really
wrong in Kosovo, at least ten times more may run away. To
where? Well, in contrast to last year, economic
crisis-ridden Montenegro may close its border (it took
50,000 equivalent to 10 pct of its own people). No Serb or
Albanian will run to Albania if they can avoid it. So
Macedonia is where most will seek safety. Some 7000-8000
have already done so.Should it approach 100,000 or 200,000
the changing ethnic balance of the country and the general
chaos would result in turmoil and breakdown. In addition,
12,000 soldiers now occupy hotels, schools, barracks and
even hospitals – places that one would believe would be
desperately needed should refugees flow into the
country.
So, all in all the government seems to follow the policy
of the ostrich, hoping everything will be fine in Kosovo,
that money will come from Taiwan and security from NATO. It
can hardly be called leadership. It’s a risky substitute for
having one’s own policies and ideas – and it bodes ill for
its future,” says Dr. Oberg who has conducted hundreds of
interviews at all levels and with all communities over the
last six years during many missions to Macedonia.
“The new NATO deployment amounts to the destruction of
the only – and successful – example of preventive diplomacy,
namely the UN peacekeeping mission, UNPREDEP. It has
happened in two ways: Macedonia’s new government recognized
Taiwan and, thus, provoked China which recently vetoed the
extension of UNPREDEP in the Security Council. One may ask
whether it was a calculated risk – in order to get the UN
out and NATO in – and to get 1 US $ bn? Was the Macedonian
government surprised by the Chinese veto?
So multilateral arrangements were replaced by bilateral
ones and regional security concerns grossly ignored. There
is no doubt that Western nations, the U.S. in particular,
could have reasons to get rid of the UN, as they did in
Croatia, Bosnia and elsewhere – to present NATO as THE
peacekeeper. Thus, “UN” will, in this field, stand for
United NATOs. The question is whether this was a responsible
act by China when seen in the longer perspective?
Macedonia can not get into NATO soon, but it can let NATO
into Macedonia. The price? Give up every independent
idea about economic politics, security politics and foreign
politics and adapt completely to the “international
community.” The U.S. and NATO “forgot” to ask the host,
including President Gligorov, what the Macedonians thought
about all this. It was never taken up in the Macedonian
parliament. In short, a lesson for all in Western
democracy…
In a long-term perspective, we are now witnessing the
third round of Western-aided destruction of former
Yugoslavia. First, there were the violence in Slovenia and
Croatia; then Bosnia-Hercegovina and now present
Yugoslavia/Kosovo threatening to not spill over into but
drag Macedonia down in international warfare. In all cases,
one or more actors were armed by Western powers, in all
cases the UN was squeezed out and NATO came in, in all cases
violence was not prevented in time and everywhere some peace
plan was introduced that secured Western control and permit
use of unlimited force “if necessary” – and in all cases
ordinary citizens are the main victims while all the
Presidents from 1991 remain on the top. It begins to look
like a pattern, a strategy. Perhaps, after all, there WAS a
plan somewhere?
© TFF 1999
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